Q&A with Rhys Bowen

  

 

 

Rhys Bowen is the author of the new novel The Castle in the Glen. Her many other books include The Rose Arbor. She lives in California and in Arizona.

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Castle in the Glen, and how did you create your character Emma?

A: I love writing stories in two time periods, or a story within a story. This one? I think the idea first came to me as I considered my own age (having turned 80). What if a famous writer couldn’t finish her last book? She has to hire someone to finish it for her. But why choose this young woman?

 

And I had been dying to revisit Scotland in a book. I remembered my own magical time on the island.

I think Emma was a product of my own life at that time. I was her age in swinging London in the ‘60s, and then went to live in Australia. So the girls I roomed with were just like Emma. Everyone wanted to see Europe, to work in England for a while.

 

I like her because she’s so vulnerable. She has no family she can rely on and I love that this book gives her new roots.

Q: Was your character Iris Blackburn based on a particular mystery writer?

A: I was thinking Agatha Christie. It had to be that level of fame.

Q: Why did you choose the Isle of Skye as the setting for this novel?

A: When I was Emma’s age I spent a magical vacation with friends on Skye. Those landscapes have remained with me—the stark mountains, the waterfalls and cliffs… such rugged beauty, always with a hint of danger. A perfect setting, in fact, for a mystery story.

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the story?

A: I always want to TAKE my readers to the place I’m writing about, to give them a mini vacation, but also I love to peel away layers of a story so that the reader is constantly surprised.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Another stand-alone novel, this one taking place in the present but also in 1450! An appraiser sent to value a private library discovers a rare book, written by a nun in 1450 and it contains the definitive list of collective nouns. Two stories interacting again! In the present a fight to hang onto an English manor house and in the past the writing of a special book.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: In spite of my age I am not slowing down. I still write two books a year, plus a shared novel with my daughter. And I have more ideas than I will ever get to in my life.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Rhys Bowen.